Tax Break Costs: 1974 – Present

The federal tax code includes hundreds of tax breaks designed to encourage certain activities that lawmakers deem beneficial to society. Tax deductions, credits, and exclusions are all different kinds of tax breaks.

Tax breaks result in fewer collected federal revenue dollars. Since 1974, these revenue losses – called tax expenditures by the federal government – have been estimated by the Treasury department and published as part of the annual president’s budget request.

Tax Break Time Series

NPP has created the first time series tax break dataset by obtaining archived budget requests, converting them to electronic format, and standardizing the categories and names over time. We’ve also added several calculations and normalizations to make these data more useful to researchers.